Prisoners Defenders records a total of 1,179 political prisoners on the island in October
14ymedio, Madrid, 6 November 2025 — Prisons have not been spared from the health emergency caused by several arboviruses spreading throughout the country. Absolutely not. According to the latest report by Prisoners Defenders (PD), published on Thursday, the epidemics, together with the effects of the recent Hurricane Melissa, have made the situation of Cuban prisoners, who were already suffering from torture and overcrowding, even worse.
In forced labour camps in Guantánamo, the organisation says, there have been reports of dengue, oropouche and chikungunya affecting “dozens of inmates”, while in Quivicán prison in Mayabeque there have been outbreaks of hepatitis and influenza. From the Combinado del Sur in Matanzas, there have also been reports of cases of chikungunya, dengue fever “and many other diseases”.
“The situation of political prisoners in Cuba is going through one of its most critical moments in recent years,” says the Madrid-based organisation,reporting that “Cuban prisons continue to be hotbeds for the spread of these infectious diseases due to the lack of medical care, the deterioration of facilities, widespread unsanitary conditions and the absence of fumigation and disinfection processes, which allows the growth of vectors of contagion.”
In its October report, the NGO identifies 463 people with “serious medical conditions”.
They add that between 2024 and 2025, they have learned of the deaths of dozens of ordinary prisoners from tuberculosis in prisons across the country. In its October report, the NGO identifies 463 people with “serious medical conditions” and 40 with mental health problems, all of whom are “without adequate medical or psychiatric treatment”.
Altogether, there are 1,179 political prisoners on the island, 11 of whom are new. Another 17 people were released from prison, according to Prisoners Defenders, “most of them for having served their full sentences”.
What’s more, there are 35 minors – the minimum age of criminal responsibility in Cuba is 16 – who remain on the list, of whom 29 are serving sentences and six are being prosecuted with “precautionary measures without any judicial supervision”. Among them, 15 “have already been convicted of sedition”, with an average sentence of five years’ imprisonment.
And, according to PD, 221 people have been convicted of this crime, all of whom participated in peaceful protests, “with an average of ten years’ imprisonment each”.
Among the new political prisoners added to the organisation’s list are four protesters from Manicaragua, Villa Clara, sentenced to up to six years in prison for “public disorder”: Raymond Martínez Colina, Carlos Hurtado Rodríguez, Osvaldo Agüero Gutiérrez and Yoan Pérez Gómez.
The PD monthly report also mentions José Daniel Ferrer and Luis Robles Elizastigui, the “young man with the placard”, exiled in the United States and Spain respectively. The NGO recalls that the leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), Ferrer, was released and exiled on 13 October, “after serving a full four years and six months sentence for “political reasons”, ending 24 August of this year, although he remained in prison after that, until he was exiled in October. It emphasises that: “His departure from the island was not voluntary, but rather a forced expatriation carried out by the Cuban regime as a condition imposed on him in order to regain his physical freedom.”
Regarding Robles, who arrived in Madrid on the same day with his mother, Yindra Elizastigui, and his seven-year-old son, they reproduced his testimony about Cuban prisons, which he has defined as “extermination centres” where prisoners are mistreated, deprived of food and medical care, and where torture “is normal and silence is imposed”.
Translated by GH
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